ANT's Brilliance, Fake Durant Trades, Clips-Mavs, and a Knicks-Sixers Deep Dive
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And now, The Low Post. Welcome to The Low Post Podcast. It's Monday, 10.30 in the morning after a wild weekend of NBA basketball featuring some classic games. Mavs, Clippers, two Eastern Conference Titans, the Sixers and the Bucks are on the brink. An epic Jalen Brunson game, an epic Sixers offensive meltdown in Game 4 in Philadelphia. The Lakers stave off elimination.

But we have to start in Phoenix, where the Minnesota freaking Timberwolves just swept the big name, big three, starry Phoenix Suns out of the playoffs. And a whole world of questions is now arising. Bobby Marks, how are you, sir? I'm doing great. I think I am still mesmerized by Anthony Edwards. I am. I am. Wow. What can you say about the whole series? Fourth quarter.

dominance, double ankle sprain, Tomahawk dunks, taking over the game and basically solidify himself as probably a top 10 player, at least in this league. You know, I was actually in my head. I couldn't fall asleep last night after the game. And I was like, if Bill Simmons did his trade value column right now today, after Anthony Edwards scored 40 points,

in a clinching game after Anthony Edwards guarded whoever they asked him to guard sometimes Kevin Durant sometimes Devin Booker sometimes Bradley Beal after Anthony Edwards detonated with one of the greatest crunch time consequential dunks in the history of the game like I I think I don't I don't know what I did like for the next two minutes after that I I was no no if I was running around the neighborhood screaming like I don't even know what happened and then the game was over

I was like, where would Bill – who would rank above Anthony Edwards in the trade value column right now? Wembenyama? Is that the whole – Probably because of his contract. Jokic and Luka are the only ones in the conversation, I think. Yeah, I mean, listen. He's got – he hasn't even started that rookie max, and there's no player option on the end of it. That's the beauty of it. Like, that's – you're locked with him –

for the foreseeable future. And you've only tasted like, you know, the, the, I think the big thing that always is that how would Minnesota handle a closeout game? Right. Have not been in that situation before. And you knew, they knew kind of like, do not give this Phoenix team team any life at all. And they were able to finish the job Sunday night. So this was the bet all along.

The Rudy Gobert trade, which, by the way, I mean, we got a long way to go. They're looking at Denver in the next round in an absolute clash of the Titans. Both of those teams right now look better than the Mavs and the Clippers who are just in a slugfest. The Thunder are awaiting the winner of that series. And if the Thunder look amazing, obviously Zion's injury changed that entire series. But the Thunder are looking at the Clips and the Mavs like, okay, whatever.

Like you guys are just punching each other, punching each other. Guys are getting hurt. It's slow. It's ugly. Like we're cool. We're playing free and easy. Like we kind of like how things are shaking out for us, but we got a long way to go for the wolves. Like they've won one playoff series. And by the way, don't minimize it. It's the first playoff series. This, this franchise has won in 20 years. Only the Minnesota Timberwolves, by the way,

Only the Timberwolves. John Krasinski of The Athletic and I have a running joke that every time he comes on my podcast to talk about the Timberwolves, something disastrous happens within 48 hours. Only the Timberwolves could have the greatest moment in their franchise in 20 years, and

Amid an ownership dispute that is so beyond embarrassing that it could only happen to the Timberwolves. With two of those owners sitting courtside, and I saw A-Rod there hooting and hollering on every Anthony Edwards shot. With both those guys sitting courtside,

watching this team when matt ishbia is the least embarrassing owner sitting courtside you've really accomplished something the dude took the ball last year remember that one that was a good one i don't think they've won a game since burn that apron baby only only the timberwolves but i'm glad we're starting with the timberwolves and not the suns oh what i was saying is we're we're a couple of playoff series wins and they're going to be underdogs against denver assuming denver closes out the lakers

Oh, don't count out the Lakers, Bobby. Don't count them out. You know what? Credit to the Lakers. They've actually, Jamal, you know, the Jamal Murray, what are they listening to as questionable with a cap strained? So that's, that's the biggest under the radar storyline in the playoffs. Jamal Murray has shot poorly the entire series. It has been overshadowed by the fact that he hit the biggest shot of the series and all time. Great shot.

Minnesota is looking healthy. And one of their big trump cards in that matchup, the trump card is a little strong because Denver is Denver, is they can throw size plays.

Of all varieties on Jamal Murray, they'll put Mike Conley on Contavious Caldwell Pope. They'll put McDaniels on Jamal Murray. Then Nikhil Alexander will come in. They make his life as difficult as any team in the league. And he's not shooting it well enough to absorb that kind of difficulty right now. He's always one eruption away from changing that. But my point is, we're like one more series win away from the all-time best

trade take apology tour coming to Tim Connolly's doorstep. I'll include myself. I was not as harsh on it as a lot of other people. I, to me, it's still too many assets to give up for go bear. I don't know what the market was. They gave up everything, but I got it. I was actually high on the wolves last year and then disappointed towns missed the whole season. I was super high on the wolves this year. I predicted top four seat for them.

Didn't like this matchup for them, and I was completely wrong about that. Completely wrong. They obliterated the Suns. But can you imagine the takes that will be recycled if this team actually makes the finals with Rudy Gobert?

Yeah, I mean – Nobody liked that trade. That was universally banned. I remember when it broke, it was like the first day of free agency. We did the show on NBA Today, and I was like, hey, listen, I've been there before. When you swing, you better make sure it's the right guy. And last season was so uneven with everything, whether it be injuries and fit. I think the one trade that –

has highlighted the tenure of Tim Connolly in Minnesota was Mike Connolly and Nikhil Alexander Walker. Dude, I've said on this podcast before...

Conley is a separate thing. I've given him his props for that. That changed the entire team. It changed the entire Lakers team. I've hit the Blazers and I've hit the Jazz and I've hit the Pelicans, but that was in a bigger trade. Those two teams just punted on the throwaway. We're just not interested. It was ridiculous at the time. He was massive in this series. One of the biggest shots of the series on a corner three from Ant. And that's what I wanted to shout out Ant.

40, 16 in the fourth quarter on six of seven shooting.

The dunk was – the dunk and the block. By the way, here's Ant right here. He's with me. He's in – oh, you can't see him because I'm blurred. There he is. He's stand-up paddling on a bobblehead. And he switched shoes. And he switched shoes. But every right read, every one, they double him. They blitz him. He's just – the whole series long, just I'm making the easy pass and I'm going to trust my teammates to make the right plays. There was one play in – I think it was in –

I don't know if it was the third quarter or the fourth quarter. It was an ant slow-mo pick and roll. They blitzed him. Instead of forcing it to slow-mo on the roll, he said, okay, Cat, you're over here. Release valve. I'm going to hit you. Cat hits Kyle Anderson like the diagonal pass on the roll. Bing, bing, bing. Kyle Anderson misses a bunny, but they put it back. I think Jaden McDaniels, who was awesome the whole series, put it back too. I said all year the biggest question about Minnesota is,

It's not Gobert. It's not his defense in the playoffs. It's not, will he get played off the floor? That was always BS Utah related. Like they just didn't have the personnel. It wasn't total BS. The problem was more offensively. He could not punish smalls. And like, it's kind of cool that Minnesota will throw him the ball and say, it's not going to look great every time big fellow, but look, you know, you can do like a little floater that might just go all backboard, but you also might dunk in somebody's face. The biggest challenge was the decision-making with the ball and

of everybody but Conley, particularly Ant and Cat. Ant is not even 23 years old. He has answered that bell to a degree that if you looked at his film a year ago, you would have thought he wouldn't be able to answer the bell like this. Every simple pass. And it doesn't have to be crazy, complicated, over the shoulder, I'm going to hit the corner, skip every time. He can do that. It's just, you're going to double me? Here you go. Boom, boom, boom. Work it around. And I want to shout out Towns.

One of my favorite plays of the game was, I think it was about seven minutes left in the fourth quarter. Conley, Mike Conley, little Mike Conley. Win it for Mike Conley, Mike Conley. Win it for me, Mike Conley. Beloved veteran out hustles Kevin Durant, who's almost a foot taller than Mike Conley, for an offensive rebound.

Those corner crashes killed the Suns the entire series. Almost 40% offensive rebounding rate for the Wolves. You knew it was going to be an advantage. It was even worse than anticipated for Phoenix. Did not want any part of the fight on the glass.

Mike Conley kicks it to Carl Towns on the left wing. Seven minutes to go. Minnesota's up one. Carl Towns has a contested three. It's going to be contested by Eric Gordon. And he's going to jack it. And that's fine. Carl shot 9 of 17 from the third series. He paused. Said, you know what? Let me just see. Eric Gordon didn't quite fly by him, but ended up on his right shoulder, giving him a driving lane to his left.

Cat very calmly takes it. Dribble, dribble. Here comes, I think, Josh Akogi is going to take a charge. How many times have we seen Cat, the king of the out-of-control drive, the king of the awkward charging foul, the king of still, even in this game, the dumbass fouls that get him on the bench?

Just blow that play completely. Run over Josh Jacoby. Cause a five-car pileup. Offensive foul. Calm. Slow. Dribble, dribble, lean a little bit. Banker off the glass and one. Nobody will talk about it because Ant had 40 points. 28 points on 11 of 17 shooting for Carl Towns. And just a little calmer. This team answered every question in this series. Every single one. Anthony Edwards, Rolando.

was so beyond spectacular in the fourth quarter of that game. Every mistake the Suns made. You get hung up on a screen and Nurk, you're six inches too far back showing on the screen. I'm hitting a three over you. You give me Brad Beal on a switch. I'm hitting a Jordan turnaround over you. So outstanding. Top to bottom, just an incredible performance by the Wolves. And then Phoenix. I mean, I don't even know what to say. Just this season is such a disaster for them.

Such a desire. I mean, here's Devin Booker's comments after the game. This is from Baxter Home Story. I think everybody would say that the details matter and it's something that we kind of passed by. Didn't think it was a big deal, but it kind of came back and bit us in the ass. Okay. Hopefully, this is more. Hopefully, everybody is feeling the same type of hurt. I have to be better. Kevin has to be better. Brad has to be better. Coach has to be better. We're the leaders of the team. We can't be out there unprepared.

Well, listen, you're, you're going to, I mean, we've already started to hear, you know, Frank Vogel rumors. You said it on countdown, right? Yeah. Rumblings. Yeah. There's been some rumblings. Let's put it that way. And, and, and we're going to, I mean, cause at the end of the day, when you can't change the parts of the roster, which when you have, you know, 150 million committed to those three next year, and you're not trading Bradley Beal and his no trade clause, um,

it's usually the coach is going to be the fall guy if that's the direction they want to go in. And listen, I was okay with the Beal trade. Like I understood the reasoning why, you know, you didn't, you know, basically moving Chris Paul, you weren't going to resign him, get something back. The no trade clause is a kick in the you know what, man. That should have been a...

Part of the negotiation as far as eliminating that there, as far as part of the trade here. They are, as I said in the article I wrote, they're better for worse. They're married to the roster, right? Like that's the reality here. And now we'll come down to ownership with you wants to continually doubling down on this roster and people like, wait a minute, how can they keep on? Well, no, they can't. Is there a third apron? Well, they would be in there if they resign Royce O'Neal.

So like the lead apron, the lead apron, they've just lit that one on fire. I mean, you sign him, it'll cost you probably another $50 million. So they are married to what this current group, unless their owner, Matt Ishbia decides, you know what?

I'm going to start looking at offers for Kevin Durant or Bradley or Devin Booker and going that direction. But that would be a complete about face as far as how he has gone about building this team. All right. Let's put the team to bed first. Yeah. When you look at why this team fell short of expectations, number one, I mean, you and I did the podcast after the Durant trade.

My reaction to that trade was, okay, like I get it. It's Kevin Durant. Yeah. But I continue to just push back every single time. I'm like, well, it's Kevin Durant. You just have to do it. Like it's a no brainer. Why are you overthinking it? It's Kevin Durant. I said, look, I think what I said was I go back to what somebody told me.

after the Clippers that who are a whole different story got Kawhi and PG said I guess you have to do it but it could go down as one of the worst trades in the history of the league I said I thought back to that and I was kind of ridiculed for that like it's Kevin Durant like look I get that it's Kevin Durant Cam Johnson hasn't exactly lit the world on fire in Brooklyn Mikael Bridges did for a hot second and had a disappointing season this year the four picks and one swap

are a lot. And Brooklyn is sitting there like, all right, maybe we got a lifeline here. Like this is like it's in the end, I guess you have to do it because it's Kevin Durant. But don't pretend that it was risk free. Understand the risk. Understand the optionality that you've punted. Like you can never use those trades again. You can never go down the road of like, what's the next star that's available? And Kevin Durant is 35 years old, almost 36.

It's the same reason why if I were Boston, when we'll talk about Boston a year ago, two years ago, rather July, 2022, when Katie's demanding a trade and there's rumblings about Jalen Brown, I was on the conservative side. Like if you're asking me for Jalen Brown and Derek White and a couple, I said two picks and two swaps, one pick and two. So like, I'm not doing it. I'm not trading young for old. I'm just not shrinking my window when my window, if I'm Boston is this wide open.

They did it. They broke up a team that maybe was never going to win a championship with Mikael Burgess and Cam Johnson in four picks. But they shut off a lot of avenues, and I guess you have to do it, but this was the risk. And they just never, for more than a game at a time, amounted to more than the sum of their parts, these three guys together. They amounted mostly to less than the sum of their parts. I don't want to get too far into the X's and O's, but there's just too many possessions where it's like,

That's the plan? Yeah. Like Brad Beal is going to ISO on Mike Conley and take an 18-foot fadeaway and Kevin Durant's not going to move for 20 feet? Where were the Durant pick and rolls? Where were the Durant-Beal pick and rolls? Where were the Durant-Grayson Allen, whose injury was a big deal in the series? Where were those? There was a possession early in the third quarter where after an offensive rebound, Kevin Durant, in this last game, had Mike Conley on him at the right elbow. Devin Booker had the ball, looked at Kevin Durant. Kevin Durant looked at Devin Booker

And somehow they all decided, you know what, Devin Booker, you attack Jaden McDaniels off the dribble. All defense, Jaden McDaniels. Kevin Durant kind of shrugs and then just waves away at Booker. Like, all right, fine, you do it. It's like, what –

The minimum signings for the most part didn't work out. You can't unearth Nasir Little and Josh Akogi at the last minute after not playing them the entire season. You bench Drew Eubanks. You play small half the game. You don't have enough faith in Nurkic to keep him in the game too long. The Royce O'Neal trade was nice.

It just, they just were too small and their offense was just never, they didn't take enough threes. Frank Vogel ranted on and on about that. It just was, it was less than the sum of their parts. And maybe that's, they only had 40 whatever games together. They didn't have time. They also just didn't show a great deal of will on the floor. Um,

to, to maximize each other. And it doesn't take anonymous sources, rumblings that, you know, there may be, maybe Durant wasn't psyched about standing in the corner all the time. Like you just can see it on the court. Like it was obvious. You can talk to other people and hear it, but you could see it on the court that the pieces just weren't working and they're going to have to reevaluate everything. But Bobby, to your point, when you go next steps,

it Beal is just almost untradeable like there isn't what you would do is look around for who is on an even worse long-term contract and but it's many but it's like a good player and so maybe the but but like maybe Beal's years are shorter and we can just get that team just wants to get off that guy I don't even know who that is like it's not Zach Levine like I don't even know like Zach Levine's contract is is not even I don't know if it's

It's degrees of problematic, but I don't see a Beale trade that's really... I even thought for a second, like,

Could you really reunite Kevin Durant and Ben Simmons? Like, is that, is that true? I was just, you know, I was just going to say it like, I wouldn't be like Brooklyn. It wouldn't even do that. Like, I mean, Ben Simmons can never play a game again. And Brooklyn's not going to swap out an expiring contract and take back, you know, two more years at $110 million. So then there are two questions. We're really three. Number one is Booker getting unhappy.

And would he try to agitate his way out? I think that's a no. I don't see that happening. Then the next question is, are we really married to this team or are we ready to look around about Kevin Durant? And or is Kevin Durant unhappy and ready to look around at other places? It's a lot of embarrassment to stomach for everybody involved. For Matt Ishbia, for Kevin Durant even, if he's interested in a trade, I have no idea. Would be a lot of embarrassment to stomach.

The other challenge would be it's not like I can go to Devin Booker and say, hey, I traded all your buddies for Kevin Durant. Now we're going to trade Kevin Durant for like some future picks and one OK veteran. And we're going to be just like a good team. Can't sell that to Devin Booker. It's got to be a win now kind of trade. So just for fun.

Do you have any fun just for fun? Like if you're going to aim, if you're going to look at trading Kevin Durant, I'm not saying they are, I'm not saying they will. I'm not saying anybody's interested in doing it. That's the only pivot there is. Is there a trade that actually makes sense? I made up a few, but I would like to hear your thoughts. Well, I mean, I think there's, there's a couple of ways to look at it. I think,

Does this make sense to Phoenix? No. If Philadelphia misses out on every free agent and basically just gives them whatever draft picks they have, right? So they can trade them five first round picks. You think re-signing Tobias Harris, you think that ship has sailed, Bobby? You think they're going to have the cap space? I don't even think I even have Tobias in my off-season Philadelphia article here. Oh my God. Yeah. I would now...

If I was Phoenix and this is the direction I would go, if I was going in that direction, I would pick up the phone and call Oklahoma City. Oh, my God. And ask for... They're not even on my list. Ask for Case and Wallace, some other young players, not their core guys, and whatever draft equity I can get back. I hate it for everybody. Well, I don't hate it for Oklahoma City because they're not giving up any of their core, core, core guys. Yeah.

But those draft picks are going to be – well, it just depends which ones I get. Oklahoma City has so many picks. I'm not interested in their picks because the Thunder are going to be awesome for the next 45 years apparently. Yeah. And if I'm the Thunder, like I'm not giving up any of my – I'm not giving up J-Dub or Chet Holmgren. No, no, no, no. Like no chance. I'm using it basically as a two-year all-NBA player before I got to pay my guys.

You think Devin Booker is psyched about that? Case and Wallace? Sure. Case and Wallace is good. Yeah, no, I know. It's, listen, it's,

But I do think there'll be – I think there's blood in the water. I think teams would be circling Phoenix if that ever – if Durant – what do you got as far as Durant? Rapid fire. Ready? Yeah. Remember, my qualifier was it's got to be win now. I know. It's got to be something I can sell to Devin Booker. The most obvious one is Durant for some portion of the Villanova Knicks and draft equity. If I'm the Knicks –

I got to see how I do in the playoffs. I kind of like the Villanova Knicks. My fans love the Villanova Knicks. Kevin Durant's 36 years old. Okay, not sure I want to do it. Boston, if they fail and some doors creak open, maybe you rekindle that kind of discussion about Jalen Brown. Still don't love it. Still young for old. It would have to be like a really bad failure for Boston who righted the ship against Miami over the weekend they play again tonight. Now the obvious ones that will always come up. Warriors.

KD reunited with the Warriors. All the young guys, salary filler. It's got to be Kaminga. It's got to be all the guys you don't want to trade. It's Kevin Durant. It's got to be all those guys. Yeah, it's probably Wiggins as your big placeholder. That's the big number, right? And then you have Kaminga and Podzinski and whatever, Moody, whatever you have. The two that will always come up

Other than the ones we've talked about are the Lakers who have the three picks to trade this summer. But again, like is Devin Booker doing backflips that Austin Reeves and Rui Hachimura are coming to town? D'Lo, whatever he does with that option. That's doesn't seem so exciting for me. If I'm Devin Booker, Miami will always, always, always come up. They were one of the Hamptons teams back in 2016, uh,

And you could, you know, you could say, Hey, look, Devin Booker, like you, you liked this kind of feel good, fun team of like Wiley young vet type guys back, back that made the finals. What we can get you Terry Rozier. He's a pseudo point guard. We don't have one of those kind of hurt us this year. We don't, we, he's not really a point guard, but we'll just sell him in that. We'll get you Hawkeyes.

We'll get you Jovich like these young guys who have who have grit and IQ, whatever else filler we need. Like maybe Hero has to get involved. I have no idea. That's like in all the picks. They can trade, I think, three picks this summer. It's not terrible. The wild ones that will will probably not come up because they're just markets that don't generally kind of do this kind of thing, although one of them did.

If continues to go haywire in Cleveland, you could make some fake trades. I'm just saying, I don't see any of them happening. You could my one that what Orlando would be the most fun, but it's not, it's, it just is. It's not their MO. The one that actually kind of makes sense in theory is Atlanta.

For one of the point guards, Deandre Hunter, Sadiq, just throw all the wings in. Yeah. Give them the, but they just don't have picks. I think they have the Sacramento pick and like one other future pick they can trade. They don't have enough picks, but that's like a fun little fake one. Um,

I honestly like these are these are the ones that will come up if and when they cross this path. And maybe they won't. Maybe it's just like, hey, let's let's give it another offseason to reload around these guys. Give it more chemistry. Change. Maybe change the coach. I don't know what's going to happen to Frank Vogel and give it another go. But all of this. Well, what else do you have?

No, I mean, I think, listen, the value of Kevin Durant in 2024 offseason is probably, well, I mean, we ran into the issues in, was that 2022 when he got traded? Or when he got asked to be traded when we basically, there wasn't that list of teams out there that were willing to basically go all in. People made fun of the Raptors for not wanting to include Scotty Barnes plus Ananobi plus a million picks. And it's like this,

What happened to Phoenix this year is why like that? That's that's these are these are deals where you have to win the championship. Yeah, that's you have to win the championship or else this is what's going to happen. Yeah. I mean, that's I mean, that's the reality. I mean, like I agree with you. And what you mentioned when you mentioned Atlanta would like, you know, swapping out Trey Young for Durant, you know. Well, here's the thing. Atlanta is at least a new thing. Yeah.

Warriors is a reunion. Yep. Lakers is LeBron. Miami is every, you know, LeBron already went there. Boston is, you know, we'll see. I think Boston is going to make the final. I mean, look at the East. The Knicks are running out of players. The Bucks are running out of players. It's like the Celtics don't make the finals. What the hell happened? Yeah. The Magic beat them in the second round of the playoffs. Yeah.

Don't see that one happening. Listen, I already had I had the magic offseason article written after game two. We're going to talk about that. I'm so I'm so angry slash shot shot in Freude shot in Freude, whatever it is about the Cavs. Listen, I went to I went to Publix with with Cleveland up nine at the half on Saturday and came out there down 27. Like what in the heck happened?

Darius Garland just dribbling around in circles like he's warming up. Hey, Franz Wagner has like 20 points in four minutes. You guys want to play harder? Got to change that Franz Wagner extension article that I wrote. Wagner brothers unite. What the hell is... Oh, Durant. Man, we're going to look back at his career and it's going to be one of the all-time like, okay, what happened here? How do we feel about this guy? And this is going to sound stupid,

Because he won two championships and two finals MVPs. Sometimes I wonder if the cap spike was like the worst thing that happened to Kevin Durant. Because he's just been a wayward soul ever since that summer of 2016 when he went and joined a 73-win team. And very clearly, I think, was disenchanted enough to leave Steve Kerr and Steph Curry and Draymond Green and Klay Thompson.

I think disenchanted that he seemed, and even Rich Kleinman, his manager, seemed a little bit taken aback that he didn't get the quote-unquote credit for those titles that he thinks he deserved. They weren't regarded the way that some superstar championships were, despite that he won the two finals MVPs, which they should have seen coming. They were an invincible team, and he was never going to get that kind of credit. And you can go back to the summer of 2016, and I've done this before, like, well,

if you were worried about that, where should you have gone? And there was Boston over here and there was Miami over here. It didn't really consider Washington. The hometown thing didn't really consider the Lakers. I don't remember who else was really super deep, you know, obviously Oklahoma city. And he wanted to leave Oklahoma city. You know how I know that he left, he left. And then Russell Westbrook called him a cupcake and, you know, did that. And then everyone dressed up as cupcakes. I just, you wonder if eight years later,

Like, man, he could have just picked any team. It didn't have to be a cap room team. Miami, I don't think was... Was Miami a cap room team back then? I think they would have had to do some stuff. But he could have just... He could have picked any team he wanted and said, I want to go there, make it happen. And...

I don't begrudge him any decision. He made whatever decision he wanted. I've always said, go join the words. I don't care. Like that's, if that's what you want to do, you want to live in the Bay area and play with Steph. How could I blame you? It just from there to the disaster in Brooklyn to ask. And that's the other thing too, is like, you know, you could, you could play the what if and everything like that. It's like when you watch how brilliant Kyrie has been in the playoffs and, you know, certainly Harden was terrific in the fourth quarter of, of, um,

Of game four. It's like that at the end of the day, when you remove, you know, the golden state piece would have probably given him the best opportunity. Well, and you, and you look at like 2021 Kyrie gets injured. Harden gets injured in the playoffs and they're still, they still almost beat the bucks. Yeah.

We don't need to do the toe on the line thing. The pandemic and the vaccination thing is like something even beyond a Black Swan event. Changed everything in Brooklyn. The whole thing went sour after that. I still think and will always think that that team was the best team in the NBA. They were my pick to win the title before everything went haywire going into whatever season that was.

I thought that big three worked. They had sold everything to build a team that worked, that made sense. They were completely unstoppable on offense. And then it all fell apart. And then he, he listed the list was Phoenix. That was the list. It was a one team list and it, it just hasn't worked. So that that's just a disaster for the disaster season for the suns. Even after getting in to the top six on the last couple of days of the season disaster, Minnesota,

buckle up man minnesota denver that's going to be a war buckle up any parting thoughts on the wolves and the suns other than congrats to the wolves and they're no and get well chris finch by the way their coach got injured oh my god what a what a tough one that was um so does he get it what if he's like in crutches does he get i don't know does he get a stool like the college coaches get you can't even put the little push cart on the sidelines there it's probably a hindrance

That would be awesome if he got like a motorized scooter and he got angry at the refs and like drove onto the court. You know, they run onto the court. They get technicals. They get fired up. Get well, Chris Finch. Unbelievable job, by the way, by Chris Finch. I think the only other thing with Minnesota is that we saw, you know, the ability of their – and I don't even want to call Jaden McDaniels a role player because he's, you know, certainly not a – I mean –

the ability for him to score 16, 18 points consistently. Um, the ability of, we talked about Nikhil Alexander Walker, Nas Reed, who I thought wasn't great in the series. Um, you know, he was good enough. Right. Um,

And then as far as the complimentary players and there's a familiarity, and I think the familiarity showed at the end of a game four where basically I think Phoenix turned the ball over like three or four straight times there. But you're right. Two of them by Bradley Beal threw away a pass to the corner on an insanely great defensive possession by Minnesota, flying around in rotation, closing off every hole. And then he just dropped the ball out of bounds. And then he fouled at half court and fouled out of the game.

Not great. No, no, not great at all. But we are, you know, Denver gets through the Lakers. Like, you know, Denver, who was it? Was it Porter Jr. last year? One of the guys, you know, they had come on, they won on a record and said that Minnesota was their toughest series, right? Last year, throwing it all through it all as far as getting through them. And now we're basically going to see the same group of teams minus a couple, you know, Bruce Brown and Jeff Green now playing a second round.

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Clippers Mavs, 2-2. A completely demoralizing Kawhi Leonard performance in Game 3. After I thought he looked all things considered pretty good in Game 2, had four steals, opened the third quarter with a pick-six run-out dunk, and was just a shell of himself in Game 3. Couldn't do anything. Was not involved, didn't play much, and you just felt the gut punch for all the Clippers fans. Like, really? This is year five of this? Yep. We've won three playoff series in the previous four seasons combined. Yep.

And we got to do this again. And then game four, I've poked at his crunch time record a lot. It's not great. But game one, Sixers-Boston last year. Game five, Sixers-Boston last year. And game four, Clippers-Mavs. Got to have it game. Pretty much a got to have it game, even with home court advantage.

no Kawhi and James freaking Harden, 33 points and damn near every single basket down the stretch. I mean, Paul George just handed him the offense. Paul George made one basket in crunch time and it was an insane fade away corner three on an ATO gone bad that he bailed out. Other than that, it was James Harden. Pick your matchup. Luca blow by floater, PJ Washington blow by floater.

It started, by the way, just really, you want to know like Ty Lue is really good. It started, if you look at back-to-back possessions with eight minutes left, Harden draws Luka on a switch and they're hunting Luka over and over again. He's been hit or miss, let's say. And they load, they start, Kyrie starts creeping over to help. So a second guy, out comes Mason Plumlee, flare screen on Kyrie.

Skip pass to Kyrie's guy, Norm Powell. Open three. Now I'm on high alert for that, right? Now the defense is on high alert for that. Next play, same thing. Harden gets Luka on the switch. Literally the next play. Luka on the switch. Same position on the court. Here comes Kyrie to help again. And here comes Mason Plumlee to set the same flare screen except...

U-turn in the middle of the paint becomes a pin down for Paul George, gets Paul George open, bounce pass to Plumlee, bounce pass to Russell Westbrook for a layup. That's great coaching and great improvisation. And from there, it was Harden doing the rest.

notably against no traditional center. Maxi Kleba at the five to finish the game. I think the Mavs fans are right to be angry that Jason Kidd did not stop the parade of floaters because Maxi Kleba is sitting there on the back line. I got Zu and I got Harden. I'm one on two. I'm too short for this. I can't jump all that high. And I'm worried about the lob to Zubats. And James Harden was just like, oh, I'm wide open. Floater, floater, floater. He's had some gutsy performances in his career. As much fun as I've made of his crunch time record,

I will always remember game six and seven of that Nets Buck series, particularly game six when he had nothing, nothing. And he gave it. There was one stretch in that game. I think it was in the second quarter where he was like, whatever I've got left in my legs, I'm giving you now. Like Durant's on the bench. He's getting, he's, you're buying him two minutes of rest. I think that was the situation. I'm, I'm amping it up right now and giving you everything I got. And in this game, he was absolutely sensational. He,

You want crunch time. You want courage. You want not shrinking from the moment. You want him not to say, well, the ball didn't find its way back for me. This is everything you ever wanted from James Harden. It's why they got him to withstand something like Kawhi having to miss a game. He was sensational. Paul George was sensational early. It looked like they were going to blow a 31 point lead and lose the game. They did blow the 31 point lead. Incredible crunch time performance.

Kyrie did everything he could. Luka was kind of quiet down the stretch and handed him the offense, and he deserved the 40-whatever in that game.

Still don't really feel like I have a good feel for this series. It's been such a strange series. But it's 2-2, and these two teams obviously have an enormous amount at stake. I don't know. Where do we even go? I don't know where this series goes from here. It seems like it's just a hunting match. Like, I'm going to hunt Luka. I think the Mavs could probably hunt Harden a little bit more. I think the Mavs need to run...

a little more offense. Like it's, it's getting slow and your turn, my turn, like give, give me some set pieces. Give me some of those pin downs. Give me a Kyrie Luca pick and roll two man game that gets it. Just get it moving. I think you saw, I think you saw a little bit of that in the third quarter when they, when they, you know, they came back from, you know, whatever they were at 17 down at, at the half as far as to get them in. And that was what lively in the game. Um, you got Derek Jones involved a little bit. Um,

with that. So some of your, your, your non Lucas slash Kyrie, um, you know, role players and the Clippers are, are daring them to beat them. And Derek Jones jr. Damn near almost did. Yep. The, um, two quick things, uh, shout out to Mike Breen because I was in my car driving back from Miami yesterday. So I had YouTube TV going through my speaker. So I listened to the great Mike Breen, um, call a game on TV, but it was actually on radio. So that, that kept me going there for, um, for,

for this Mavericks Clippers second half. I would be afraid that a really dramatic bang, I would drive off the road. Especially on a two-lane road in Alligator Alley. That is not like... Like the Curb Your Enthusiasm episode where he gets to beep panic. There's another one where he hears the radio jingle for double A. Beep, beep.

MCO and you think it's a car crash. Anyway. But I think after game three, how everything ended with Russ and going off the... Basically going off the hinge. And then Noah Leonard and again...

And you mean the script was written, right? Like the script was written to basically for them to lose game four. Everyone's preparing. Everyone's preparing. They're like, it's just the end of an era for the Clippers. By the way, Paul George still hasn't signed an extension. Right. And then when Paul scored, you know, he scored 26, 27 points in the first half, you're thinking, oh my God, the winner of this is Paul George right now. He's proved you can't, you know, basically write me a blank check of whatever I, you know, $221 million. Right.

At the end, though, a couple of things that happened. Putting Plumlee in for that stretch of minutes in the fourth quarter, I thought was really, really good. I thought he gave you kind of a, you know, a lob threat that they used a little more athletic than Zubac here. The ability of Harden to take over down a stretch, right? I mean, game tied, boom, boom, boom, with two or three straight plays right at the rim. Norm Powell hit a huge three during that stretch.

I mean, to blow a 31-point lead, have Dallas come back and basically tie it and then go back up 11 and then blow that lead and then the ability to win on the road is remarkable based on the circumstances there. And you're right. I don't know. Going into game five, I don't know what way it will go. We could see Luka's dominance in Kyrie and they could win by 20 in L.A.

Or we could see another Harden type game when less is better around him. We saw in Philly for that game one with no Embiid on an island by himself. He still has Paul George in this situation and the group of role players around him. Or we could see Harden basically say, you know, go off again here. But this series, I think we're looking at seven.

seven games and then and then leads into what's left of these two teams when they get Oklahoma City you know staring down at them that's what I was said before but if I'm Oklahoma City I'm watching this like this is awesome beating the hell out of each other look slow and old this is great for us we're young and fast um yeah I want more they just I wonder if they'll

If Kawhi's out again, and if Kawhi's going to play like he did in game three, the Clippers are just not, they were a more well-oiled machine without him. That version of Kawhi was just not helpful enough. And I love Kawhi. He's amazing. You wonder if they will do more Dallas to just not give Harden the switch that he wants every single time.

that will open up some things like if you hedge and Terrence Mann is in the short roll like that maybe you have to live with that particularly if there's one more non-shooter on the floor whether it's Russ or Zubats or whoever if you're gonna if you're gonna switch and just let him beat you you probably need a rim protector on the floor more than they had one um I'd like to see more of Luka in the post get some set pieces for that and by the way here's the brewing issue in the series the Clippers are plus three total for the series plus three points after four games

Luca and Kyrie together, the Mavs are plus 31. All other lineups minus 34. The one-star lineups have just not had enough pop and enough offense to them. I also, I thought, I liked the Josh Green minutes. I wanted a little bit more, although he was a little tentative. I liked their lineup with Josh Green in the Derrick Jones Jr. spot for minutes here and there.

But both these teams need to find a little bit of rhythm on offense in the half court other than, I mean, Harden was just unbelievable. Great Harden game. But, I mean, you also have to wonder, like, everyone assumes Paul George is signing the extension. I haven't heard anything to the contrary. He hasn't signed it. I mean, at this point with Kawhi, you just have to assume that every year there's going to be something, right? If you're Paul George, you have to look around and be like, okay, I mean, like, I just, you just, it's the same with Embiid. Like, you just have to hope that it's not,

At the wrong time. And Bede's a whole different conversation. Anything else on this series? No, I mean, I think you hit on the head regarding Paul George. I mean, listen, you're going into a billion dollar building in the fall and you cannot afford to have basically the uncertainty of Kawhi Leonard's health and a collection of role players.

And maybe James Harden. Well, but my point was, if I'm Paul George, like I love L.A. I chose the Clippers. I want to be here. Yeah, but it's the same old song, right? It's like went like every year. It's the same thing. You know, this would be your I think your three that Kawhi Leonard would not finish a either has not played in the postseason or will not finish a series here. Cleveland, Orlando, just a complete no show by the Cavs in Orlando. A complete no show.

If you're emblematic of a team that is apparently not a serious team, their turnover rate for the series would have been last in the regular season. Their offensive rebounding rate for the series is pathetic. Their defensive rebounding rate for the series is pathetic. This should be a good rebounding team that plays two bigs a lot. It's never been a good rebounding team. Donovan Mitchell, three games in a row. Darius Garland, minus 45 for the series. He's averaging 12 points a game. It's like, what? What?

Look, he had Donovan Mitchell's coming off some knee stuff, broken nose. Darius Garland had a bunch of injuries this year, including a broken jaw that he had to have wired shut. Couldn't eat for a while. Lost a lot of weight. It's been a tough year. The bottom line is neither of them has played well enough. Essentially, no one has played well enough, honestly. Neither of the guards has played well enough. And when Mitchell's off the floor, you're like, Darius...

This is like your time, man. This is why we stagger the minutes. You got any life in you? And the answer has too often been no. The double big lineup, Mobley and Allen, is only minus one for the series. By the way, the Cavs are minus 37. They're getting the doors blown off them in scoring margin. Every other lineup is minus 36. So the double big lineup hasn't been...

awful. The bottom, like Cleveland's offense is failing them. Cleveland's offense is failing them. It's failing their defense. Their offensive rating for the series is 97 points per 100 possessions. That would be about 10 points worse than the worst offense in the league in the regular season. Some of that is they're shooting 27% on threes. That's very bad. It's not great. Max Strews can't get going. George Yang can't get going. The guards can't get going. Evan Mobley's three of 11. People are going to give him shots all day. Okoro can't get going.

So that's somewhat luck, but the Magic are an awesome defensive team. They can switch a lot. They will switch everything but their centers a lot of time. They will switch everything, but they don't want to switch on Mitchell. They're a tenacious defensive team. This team's offense looks broken. And all year you've had this sense of they just can't find their rhythm and sustain it for any period of time.

They tanked the last game of the season to get this matchup. The basketball gods saw it. If they lose this, if they lose this after I thought their penance was going to be you tanked your way into Boston's half of the bracket, you're going to get destroyed by the Celtics scoring machine in the second round. That'll be your penance. If their penance is losing to a totally untested and inexperienced Orlando Magic team who also can't shoot straight,

That is a catastrophe of catastrophes with Donovan and Mitchell's extension talks looming with, does this double big model even work with JB Bickerstaff's future being uncertain in that scenario if they lose in the first round?

Like, they just got to show up, man. I don't know what happened to them or Orlando, but that was absolutely embarrassing. Well, and they got saved in game one and two because Orlando couldn't make it three, right? And that's kind of been their Achilles all year for a team that ranks in the bottom in three-point percentage. And I thought Orlando – I thought there was –

you know, from a defensive standpoint, that kind of kept them somewhat in, in all those, you know, double digit games kept them in the game and they didn't go away from that here. But yeah, I mean, listen, when you look at the second half for game three and the second half for game four on the road, the ability to go up three Oh on Thursday night, the ability to put them away Saturday afternoon, um,

Mitchell scoring 10 points and is a complete no-show. And it came out and admitted that, that he has to be better. That,

There is no team in the Eastern Conference with as much pressure, and we can talk about Boston, but I still, you know, I think Boston will get through this Miami series and they're going to wind up facing one of these two teams. Then what Cleveland has to deal with when you talk about, as you said, the Mitchell extension will be looming. The questions on whether Garland and Mitchell can play together.

you know, the two bigs, the immobile, um, is, uh, extension eligible. Also, this off season, I would give mobile in this series, like a B to B minus he's been decent, but just not as consistent as you would hope. And Jared Allen's good. Like he's, he's pretty consistently good. Yeah. I mean, so that's the, the two bigs is probably the least of my concern. Um, it's, it's got, you know, it's, it's the ability to, you know, your backcourt there, uh,

How do you get your role players going again, whether it be a core in Niang, Lavert? But I think game five, certainly not. I'm not going to put it up there with the end of LeBron and the first stint here. But it's probably as big of a game that they have. They've had in a long time in franchise history. Well, look, the playoffs...

The playoffs are everything. The playoffs, entire organizational pivots and player empowerment pivots are made based on what happens in the playoffs.

Whatever flaws are simmering within your team, whether it's chemistry, whether it's lack of trust in the coach, whether it's lack of trust in each other, whether it's just a fit that hasn't worked out. Like, I don't think the Garland and Mitchell fit has been as seamless as I thought it would be, given that they're both good shooters. It's too much your turn, my turn, standing around. And they have other tools in their bag, and you see them every once in a while. Give the ball to Mobley, let him facilitate, run your split actions. They got Struess going a little bit on actions like that.

in game four, but whatever issues you've got, the playoff hothouse is going to bring them to the forefront. You can't hide them. They will come out because everyone is out for blood in the playoffs. And if you aren't ready for it, it will come out. And so you're right to say that this is a defining moment for the Cavs, even though they haven't won a playoff series. And it's like defining moment of define what it's a big, big moment for them. And, uh,

And the Magic, like, the Magic are going to do what they do. They're going to grind on defense. They're going to get in your face. They're going to get deflections. They're going to switch. They're going to be tenacious on the boards. They're going to beat the hell out of you. They're going to get to the line. Like, they're going to do what they do. They might have a bad offensive game. They might have an okay offensive game. They're probably not going to have a great one. Might have a great half, I guess. You're just going to have to beat them by playing really well on both ends of the floor and play... You need a B-plus game at least to beat the Magic. They're going to come out and defend every night. And the Cavs just...

Game four, Bobby, these are real stats from a real NBA game in the year of our basketball gods, 2024. The Cavs took 17 threes and got two offensive rebounds in the whole game. Well, and you saw, I mean, listen, if you want to go all the way back to the Knicks series last year, right? You know, the ability to outwork. I mean, it comes down to outwork being outworked.

All right, before you go, speaking of the Knicks, I'm going to have Fred Katz on shortly to talk about Knicks Sixers and just absolutely unbelievable Knicks win in game four. It's too early. These teams like the Sixers are, despite not having home court advantage, this has been a nip and tuck series. They're one officiating crisis away from being 2-2, but they're down 3-1.

The Bucs are down 3-1. Obviously, the Bucs were drawing dead in Game 4 against the Pacers. No Dame, no Giannis. Bobby Portis gets ejected. And by the way, if you hit somebody in the face, you're going to get ejected. I don't care if it's open hand or you kind of cup the nape of their neck, you know, whatever. Like, that was...

You're risking an ejection for that. I don't love saying that, but I wasn't surprised he was ejected. I wasn't like, oh, that's a... The techs for the too small and the Siakam taunting tech were garbage. Like, get those, let them... I know you're trying to quell any tension and you didn't do it because there was a fight afterwards, but the Bucs are drawing dead in that game. They are down 3-1. These are two of the East Titans, right? The Sixers, the Bucs, and the Celtics have defined the Eastern Conference for the last three or four years, along with the Heat.

At least in the playoffs in the regular season, those three teams have defined Eastern Conference. Two of them are now on the ropes in the first round. Too early to count them out. We don't know who's playing for the Bucks in game five. We could be staring at a Knicks Pacers throwback throwback 90s rivalry second round series. Also, the Carmelo Anthony Roy Hibbert rivalry that was happened for a second be fun.

I know you've, I just, I know you've started your off season articles on both. So pick one. I mean, obviously you have two of the, arguably two of the three best players in the NBA, two of the five best players in the NBA are Giannis and Embiid at the crosshairs of all this pick one. And just tell me what your thoughts are. You listen, I think there are two different ones. I think, you know, I think Milwaukee is a lot different than probably the last year losing to Miami in the first round. Uh,

and then going out and firing their head coach. I don't think Doc Rivers is going to lose his job if they lose it based on the circumstances, right? Certainly no Giannis, uh,

for the whole series so far, no Lillard in, in game four, a wounded team. How do you evaluate the roster based on 35 games under Doc Rivers, right? 17 and 18. The three guys with Middleton played eight games total, right? Like, so how do you under, under doc, under doc. So how do you, so do you feel like, so the question for me is like, do you feel like this roster can be still a championship level or,

with a full training camp under Doc Rivers. Okay. You got $152 million committed to your, your starting five. You're a second apron team. Again, I think you saw a little bit, um, with some of their depth, um, you're going to lose Beasley. You're going to lose probably Patrick Beverly, Jake Crowder, that group. I think it's important for them this off season. They got two picks in the top 35 to start rebuilding out with younger players, uh,

With their depth. I think that's that. And I think that's critical for them. I don't unless all of a sudden Giannis ask out, which I don't think that's going to happen. Or Lillard raises his hand and says, I want to go somewhere else. I think you're kind of you're this is kind of who they are.

They can go out and move Lopez if they want and break that contract up into multiple pieces. Portis is up for an extension this offseason, four for 79. He's got a player option for next year. So they're different than where Philadelphia is. Philadelphia, on the other end, basically a blank canvas coming into this offseason.

Maxie is the priority. Of course, I would expect him to sign a five or two Oh five max extension. Now, what do you do with the rest of the roster? I think you've seen enough from if they were, if they're, they're going to continue, but tomb,

as far as prioritizing your own free agents, but tomb Kyle Lowry, Kelly Uber. Um, I think if you can get the Anthony mountain back, who has been hurt kind of on the, you know, on the cheap, but then what do you do with your cap space in a average at best free agent class? Um, or, uh,

Is that going to have a slot open for one of these players who lose in the first round or maybe second round? The scruntled all-star type guy to go out and get, you know, go after when you have five tradable first round picks. Let's start with Philly since you ended with them. Uber is, but I totally agree with you. By the way, the Tyrese, here's how the Tyrese maxi extension should go. I believe clutch represents Tyrese maxi. So I'm going to pretend that I'm rich Paul. Hey, Daryl, I want all the money.

I want all the bells and whistles, all of it, all of it. I even want the option. I want player option. I want whatever bells and bonuses, whatever the, the, the, all the greatest stuff I can get. I want, and I don't want to hear any other word from you, Daryl Morey, other than yes. Where do I sign? Cause through the unthinkable turmoil that this franchise has undergone for nine, 10 years now, Bobby marks more than that.

This guy is a breath of fresh air. He's reliable. He shows up for every goddamn game. He plays hard and he's tough and he can score against anybody. Give him all the money. Give him it. If you start, if you start being like, well, I don't know if I can give you this or that or that. I'm going to be like, are you serious, man? I know you got to win every negotiation. Give me everything. That's the Tyrese Maxey negotiations. Rich Paul, you can give me 1% for giving you advice on that. By the way, nice of you.

Buddy Heald to show up in this series. Embiid, as the story continues, plus 34 in 160 minutes, no Embiid, minus 38 in 32 minutes. It's hard to lose by more than a point a minute in the NBA. Really hard to do. And they're throwing the kitchen sink. Those lineups have Maxie, Harris, you know, well, Harris. So you mentioned the cap flexibility that Philly has and the picks they have via the hardened trade that they did not capitalize on at this trade deadline. And maybe there was nobody for them to get.

I mean, this is a good team and I'm not counting them out of the series at all, but you just have like, I just is, is Embiid waiting indefinitely for like, you got to get somebody this summer. Like you did this team as it is, is not good enough around him. I don't think, I think they need one more. They need one more guy who's supposed to be with Tobias Harris is really like another guy who's like a good self creator on offense and ball mover score or whatever.

You better get that guy on the flip side. Well, I don't, that's all I'm saying. You better get that guy. Yeah. I mean, the challenge comes, who's that guy, right? I mean, really outside of the free agents, it's probably Paul George, right?

I mean, that's the, that's, you know, I mean, how many times does guys leave? You know, are you willing to slap down a four for $221 million contract on him? And then, and then you, what you would do is you would basically build it out your rest of your roster. You, maybe you bring Kyle and between back on minimums, you give Uber your room, mid level, maybe you got a little bit of cap space left, but I think you've shown they've shown that.

that, you know, the Maxie Embiid combination is lethal, right? I mean, when those two are on the court, they are as good as any. Do you want to go out and split up your room? You know, I mean, with the likes of, you know, the role player types. Maybe, maybe that's the move because these two guys are that good. Maybe it's just, I got to beef up, you know, spots four to seven. The irony of them facing Embiid. Look, I don't,

The guy is absolutely incredible. Like, just incredible. The 50-point game he had the other day was just incredible. In what was that game? Three. Game three. Yeah, three. Effortless. And he's playing hurt, and he doesn't have the same power to his game that he would normally have, although he'd get busted out every once in a while. It's like, oh, okay. Isaiah Hardenstein, you're on the basket stanchion. Shout out Isaiah Hardenstein.

I just don't know, like going forward, this knee thing is just, it seems to never go away. And if I'm Philly, I think I just have to manage the regular season with him. Whatever it takes to get him healthy in the playoffs, that's all I can do. Like if that's 50 games, 55 games, whatever load managing has to happen. And on the flip side, like the irony of the Sixers playing the Knicks right now,

is that every time it's like, well, is Embiid going to be unhappy? The Knicks are like the rumored team, right? The Knicks are like, well, that's the team that will trade a million dollars. Here's the thing now. Now, here's the million-dollar question. If you were the Sixers front office, would you sign him to a three-year, $193 million extension starting on July 18th? What am I supposed to do? The guy's unbelievable. He might be the best player in the NBA, second best player in the NBA. I still think Jokic is the best player in the NBA. But when healthy this year, he was as dominant as any player has ever been.

He's the whole franchise. I have to. If I'm a team like the Knicks, though, I've reached the point where can I really trade everything for this guy? I'm a little scared to do it because he's just hurt all the time. And just like with Kawhi, your working assumption has to be that at some point in any given season, he's going to suffer a lower body injury. And you just have to pray that it's not serious and you have to pray that it's at the right time of the season because he's so good that

And we saw it this year. Like if he's out five games at the wrong time in the playoffs, your season is over. That's it. Like you're done. And I, this is, this is a, this is just like kind of theoretical spitballing stuff that people around the league do. But anyway, and on the bucks, I just don't know what to say. It's just, it's just such a bummer. I've said before, like I thought the Dame trade was a good idea. I still think the Dame trade was a good idea.

Could not control where drew holiday ended up that ended up being a disaster for the bucks I would like to dig into the mechanics of that at some later date when people are more free to talk about why it couldn't be a three team trade and why they couldn't control his destination a little bit more.

I think it was a good idea. This team just has not, this team just hasn't worked. It hasn't worked for any consistent period of time this year. And now their backs are against the wall. I think they're better than Indiana when they're healthy. I think they're better than, I think they'd have a chance. I think even if you took away Damon and had Yonason or one or the other, they'd have a chance to win the series. If they had one of those two guys, the whole series. They don't right now. They need one of them now. And the Indiana team is just not going away.

Yeah, I mean, listen, I mean, as much, I mean, and I thought Milwaukee actually played pretty well. Yes. And on, on Sunday, I mean, I thought they were in the game, you know, certainly Milton basically has done as much. Brooke has done. You got to live from it. You mentioned the young guy, Andre Jackson Jr. Yeah. He was the only player with a, I think he was a plus nine in game, in game four. And that's where going back to like, you got to find like,

eventually you get like you can't just keep on spinning the wheel with these minimum guys because you sign four maybe one hits like that's the reality of it um so where milwaukee goes i think you know we'll see what happens with john horse their general manager you certainly have heard rumors maybe um that detroit job is open horse work there at one time here um

But I do think the likelihood is that you have like the same group, your core guys, and you have another, you get a, you get a training camp under Doc Rivers. You get an off season to evaluate what works on the limited body of games that

that um that he coached there and by the way we we didn't we didn't talk about it because it happened it's now two games ago and it happened on friday night they they damn near one game three behind an epic chris middleton performance including two ridiculous game tying threes and one almost game tying three from the corner at the end aaron neesmith hit a go-ahead three at one point and then tyrese halliburton with a floater and one to win the game um but they were right there

And I will talk a little bit more about that series plus Nick Sixers with Fred Katz of The Athletic. Now, Bobby Marks, any parting thoughts here as we gear up for the end of the first round? We've said goodbye to the Suns. We have a couple of teams on the brink tonight in New Orleans and the Lakers. We're going to start saying farewells to some of these teams. I mean, we've already – let's be honest. We've already said our farewells to the Lakers. I talked about their pending offseason last week. I mean, I talked about LeBron's future and –

Yeah, I mean, listen, at the end of the day,

you know, I, I think where they are with their, I think the Russell situation is going to be interesting to monitor, right. As far as him opting out of that $19 million contract. I, it's hard for me to see him getting 19 on the open market. Does he take less, maybe more years that they lose a tradable contract, right? So now all of a sudden, if they want to go big game hunting, though, this is what we got left. Get Austin Ruse, Rui Hachimor and Gabe Vincent, Jared Vanderbilt, right? Those are your four and your three picks here. I just think it's hard to,

for certainly not getting swept helps a little bit, but if you lose in game five and you can say, you know what? We're content with the same group. They still won 46 games this year. They're a good team. Conference finals last year. But where the West is, it's just not that next level. They've had the lead for like 80% of this series against Denver. They're a good team. There's no shame in being a good team. Your best player is almost 40. And as I said last week with Moe DeKeele, you can go back and listen to that podcast.

Two, three, four years later, they're going to continue to pay the price for the Russ trade. Just because it happened a long time ago and they've remade their team a bunch of times, the ripple effects of that and of Caruso being let go

Continue to compound Bobby Marks. You got to go do some stuff. Thank you for lending me some of your expertise. Off-season articles today. The Phoenix Suns off-season article is up on ESPN dot com. All the teams that are eliminated. They will continue to come. I did get a comment from a Knicks fan saying, when are you going to write? When is the Knicks article coming out? And I want to know about Hartenstein. And I said, listen, if you're new to this, you don't get them until you lose. So enjoy the ride.

Oh, my God. Knicks fans, this is they're just euphoric. All right, Bobby Marks, thank you, sir. Thanks, Zach.

Seriously, you had one job. Now the closest you'll get to the 50-yard line is parking lot D. Yeah, checking first is smart. So check Allstate first for a quote that could save you hundreds. You're in good hands with Allstate. Savings vary. Terms apply. Allstate Fire and Casualty Insurance Company & Affiliates, Northbrook, Illinois.

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$45 upfront payment equivalent to $15 per month. New customers on first three-month plan only. Taxes and fees extra. Speeds lower above 40 gigabytes. See details. All right, let's bring on my buddy Fred Cass of The Athletic to talk about maybe the most interesting series of the first round. Certainly the most dramatic close games. Flagrant fouls. Should people have been ejected? Legs are being grabbed. Other legs are being stepped on. Groins are being kicked. The same person is at the center of all these. He also had 50 points. Knicks, Sixers, Jalen Brunson.

47 points.

In a game four win, going at Joel Embiid in drop defense over and over and over again, going against switches over and over and over again, that perhaps the Sixers might fight a little harder not to give Jalen Brunson an absolutely epic offensive performance. One of the greatest games in the history of the New York Knicks franchise. 18 of 34, 47 points, 10 assists, buttressed by a massive game from OG Ananobi. 47 minutes left.

guarded Joel Embiid down the stretch of the game because Isaiah Hartenstein was in foul trouble and Preston Sitchua isn't big enough or strong enough, I guess, for the job. OG has a lot of experience doing that, guarding centers from Toronto. 15 offensive rebounds for the Knicks. They gut out a game that was, frankly, exhausting to even watch, let alone play in for 40-plus minutes. The Knicks are up 3-1. Fred Katz,

What are we looking forward to in game five as the Knicks try to close it out? Other than, like, are the Knicks running out of players? Mitchell Robinson is injured. He tried to warm up and didn't play. Bojan Bogdanovic played one minute. He got injured. Julius Randle is injured. Alec Burks apparently was traded for for no reason at all. He doesn't play. Like, that's my primary concern right now about the Knicks going forward is they're running out of guys and they're playing their guys so many minutes that...

If I'm Indiana and I'm up 3-1 against Milwaukee, I'm like, we got a shot against this team that's objectively better than us, but they're running on fumes almost, but they keep winning.

Zach, haven't they been running on fumes for like four months now? Maybe there's something in the water with the Nova Knicks that they just don't get. Like Josh Hart doesn't get tired. DiVincenzo doesn't seem to get tired. He plays the least of their starters. Hartenstein is like, I've been a bench player my whole career. I'll play 40 minutes. What do you need? I don't understand it. Brunson is the only one who's like, he looks tired. And you can understand why. He's six feet tall and getting pounded a lot and has to score 47 points for them to win. Unbelievable performance.

Yeah, I mean, look, I'm going to quote your guy, Tom Thibodeau, right now. If you ask Tibbs about minutes, what's he say? Every time, without fail. You condition your body to play the minutes you want to play. And I do think, I honestly don't know what to believe in this, but I do think Tibbs would tell you,

You know why they're able to play all these minutes in the playoffs and still be getting the loose balls at the ends of games when other teams look tired? Why they're still like OGN and OB is still able to able to guard Joel Embiid for an entire second quarter or fourth quarter, I should say, during his 45th, 46th, 47th minutes.

And Embiid looks tired. Embiid has to go for a layup instead of a dunk late because he's working so hard with Ananobi fronting him with doubles coming. Should have just taken the jumper down. You're talking about when he was down four with 25 seconds left? Yeah, open jumper. Should have taken the jumper for sure. But you look at this and you're like, how is Josh Hart grabbing Lewis Ball so late? And Tibbs will tell you the reason why is because they're used to it.

Tibbs is such a big believer in the regular season is not supposed to be any different than the postseason and not just because you're supposed to win every single game in front of you. It's also because you're creating habits, which you're not going to divert from when the game really matters. And so Josh Hart playing 46 minutes in game four, he's like, that's any other night for him.

That's just a normal night for him. He played 46 minutes during the regular season. Miles McBride had a game earlier this year where Jalen Brunson got hurt a minute in and the McBride entered. McBride played literally the entire remainder of the game. Like they've all kind of done it before. I think they get put in these situations and it just feels somewhat normal to them because they've done it so many times throughout the season. And if they're healthy, they can execute on it. All time tough performance in game four.

by the Knicks. I thought Ananobi was sensational. Like, to play 47 minutes, get 14 rebounds, get just enough supplementary offense. Like, just enough. He has little guards on him every now and then. Like, I think they could actually go to that in the post for just like, we're trying to scrounge points that are not Jalen Brunson doing everything. And then to battle Embiid the way he did, Philly's offense is ground to a halt. And that's on Philly too. Like, they just kind of

Like, oh, you're fronting. We can't enter the ball. Tyrese Maxey is just like trying, trying, trying. By the time you get it in, there's six on the shot clock. You don't have time to do anything. You have time for one pass or a shot. That's it. That's what the Knicks are banking on. Where was the, okay, Tyrese is in trouble. Here comes a random pick and roll. Here comes Jalen Brunson's guy to set a random pick and roll. Like, you don't have to wait around to post up Joel Embiid.

just handicapping your offense like that in terms of the clock but credit to Knicks man they battled they fought and Ananobi on Embiid was good enough part of the reason it was good enough was Precious Achua was also on the floor Hartenstein was in foul trouble didn't get in in the fourth quarter and Precious Achua was flying around in rotation and every time they did enter the ball they

Double, rotate, rotate, rotate. And yeah, the Sixers missed. I think Maxie missed a three that was open. They got an Oubre dunk out of that kind of double team kick, kick, kick action. But the Knicks were on point and they took that game. And now the Sixers face elimination in New York in game five. Give me like a couple of like this is a potential adjustment we'll see from Philly or for New York. Pick a couple of things that you just got your eye on for the next game.

Sure. I'm really curious to see exactly what Tibbs goes to with OG because everybody, and rightfully so, he did a really good job guarding and beating that fourth quarter. And you mentioned fronting him.

That was so important because it's not just about like you only have six seconds to run that action. It's that when the first action doesn't work, you don't have time to run a second. If you're getting into your action with 17 on the shot clock, you can try an entry pass. If the post-up doesn't work, you can kick it back out and you can have a Tyrese maxi pick and roll with 12 or 11 left on the clock. But when it hits like eight, seven, now you're frantic and the Knicks were rotating really well.

One of the things I'm really curious about with Ananobi is he guarded Maxie for pretty much all of the first three games. And it wasn't just that he closed guarding Embiid. They rejiggered their matchups coming into that game. From Ananobi? Yeah. Yeah, Ananobi's guarding Kelly Oubre. And they're basically using him as a roamer. And they have Josh Hart on Tyrese Maxie. They have Deuce McBride on Tyrese Maxie.

McBride, I think, has done a good job on Maxie throughout this series. He's stuck with him. He's fought hard around screens. And when DiVincenzo is not hitting his shots like he really hasn't for the past two games, Tibbs has shown that he's going to stick with him. McBride closed that game last night.

I'm really curious to see how they use in an OB because now off the bat, they've used him in various different ways at this point. And Tibbs is not thought of as this guy who's going to play around with his defense. He believes in what he believes, but like, look, what's the ultimate Tibbs defensive principle. Number one, take away the paint. And number two, your first 18 responsibilities are to your primary assignment. Like you're,

You do not want to be put in rotation. When you do, you better scramble, you better communicate, you better get out into your guy. But your responsibility is to your own man. There's no gambling. We're not going to unnecessarily double all that kind of stuff. And for the most part, they've guarded and beat straight up unless it gets really deep in the paint.

In the fourth quarter, they were strategically putting themselves in scramble situations, which is not a normal thing for a Tibbs defense. I'm really curious to see exactly how Tibbs goes about using OG after how well they defended doing that way. Does he go to him on Embiid?

Later in the game when Embiid's played the entire second half, maybe he's a little more tired. And now Ananobi can really exhaust him by fighting him hard. Does he continue to put him on Oubre, which I thought worked well with Hart guarding Maxie, with McBride guarding Maxie? Does he switch things back up? Because...

Embiid and Maxie are too good. If you give them the same look every time, it doesn't matter how well you cover it, they're going to figure it out. That's just the way this stuff works. I am really curious to see how he leans on OG though going forward because he was awesome in game four. And I did not see the heart on Maxie adjustment coming.

I thought it was smart because it allowed Ananobi to be a help defender and he's big and he's long and he's super fast and really, really good at that. I thought that was a very smart adjustment and one that I did not because their defense had been playing so well. I just didn't see that one. I just didn't see that one coming for the Sixers. I mean, I just don't know how many cards they have to play other than I wanted more maxi and bead two man game. I want to force the Knicks to get in rotation a little bit more. They had a lot of success as we documented after, um,

after game three with that staggered pick and roll involving Brunson on Kyle Lowry. I would like to see more of that. I'd like to see him go at Brunson more. But Embiid is tired, and he's coming off an injury. He's playing with an injury. He should be tired. I thought the game turned –

In the third quarter, when the Sixers got up by 10 or 11 points, Embiid had three really bad turnovers, all passing turnovers in the third quarter. A couple miscommunications with Kelly Oubre, a miscommunication on a handoff with Maxey where he just tossed the ball out of bounds. And down the stretch, like, he was 0-5 in the fourth quarter. They were tough shots. I thought he should have taken that jumper when they were down four. And by the way, only, like, the Sixers...

To have one of your players miss a free throw on purpose and to have your other players not understand that he was going to miss a free throw on purpose, it's like, what do we... Why can't they just ever be normal? They just can't ever be normal. As for the Knicks, McBride's been great. I mean, let's just talk about Brunson. What struck you about Brunson's performance? Because we need to just zero in and just 47 points for this guy. I mean, just what a season. Honestly,

The shot making is just unbelievable at this point. He had a play at the end of the third quarter or it's actually after he comes back in when he when he hurts his knee and has to sit a couple minutes eventually comes back in the game where he just takes him be right and shoots this little off balance floater that

scrapes the top of the arena and falls in. And one of the things with Brunson that always kind of amazes me is how often he hits the front of the rim and the ball still goes in. Now I've talked to him about this because most really good shooters will aim for the back rim. And I've asked him, but there's some guys who aim for the front and I've talked to him about it. I've asked him like, do you aim for the front rim? And he says he aims for the back rim, but an inordinate amount of his shots,

because of his touch. I mean, you look at that incredible game to finish with the referees and the, and the blown non-foul calls on Maxie and all that kind of stuff. But how does that start? Jalen Branson shoots a spot up three on a night when he's not shooting. Well, the ball hits the front of the rim. I don't really understand physically how this happened. It hit the front of the rim and then kind of toppled over as if there was a wind gust and ended up going into the rim and

His touch is so extraordinary on when he really gets going. I think ultimately the Sixers have done an incredible job guarding him. Oubre has been sensational.

He's been the best Jalen Brunson defender all season. He did a great job on him during the regular season. And, and one of the things they've done insanely well, and this is both an execution standpoint and a schematic standpoint is they've done an incredible job defending him from behind where for the beginning part of the series, they had usually Kyle Lowry guarding Josh Hart and Kyle Lowry is just kind of sagging up a heart waiting in the lane for Brunson to hit the paint. You have,

And Hartenstein's man, Embiid, waiting down low there as well. So there's a whole walled off area of the paint for Brunson. So when Brunson gets into the paint, Brunson likes the mid-range, but he likes the short mid-range. He wants to be able to shoot from eight, 10 feet. He wants to be able to have space to do all those pivots and his post moves and all that kind of stuff.

And what's happening is, whether it's Oubre, whether it's Batum, somebody's trailing behind him and contesting that shot from behind so we can't pivot backwards or go to his step back, which he's so good at from that area. And one of the things that Brunson has done is I think he's going straight up more, not worrying about the foul as much to where his shot is evened out during that point. I think he's much more prioritized having to get deep into the paint

And another thing that's really helped is Josh Hart hit a crap ton of threes and Philadelphia is not guarding him the same way. They're not closing out on him like he's Clay Thompson, but they are not showing him absolutely no respect or no urgency in closing out on him. And you see when Hart gets the ball in the corner, somebody goes to make at least a modicum of an effort to close out. And the paint is a little more open for Brunson. I was really curious about,

on if Philadelphia, you mentioned adjustments for Philadelphia. I was really curious on if Philadelphia goes back to where it was at with Hart over the first two games because Hart was killing him. He was hitting four threes in each of the first three games, but

The strategy that allowed Hart to get hot also contributed to Brunson's slow start to the series. And Brunson is an expert now at seeing coverages and figuring them out and figuring space and where to maneuver. But I wonder if that's something maybe they go back to and they say, I don't care if Josh Hart takes 10 threes. If he hits 10 threes, you just tip your cap because chances are, play the percentages and you might get a game four out of him, which he goes over seven in.

I think they probably should pivot a little bit back in that direction. The simplest Knicks offense in this series is Jalen Brunson picking out whatever matchup he wants and going one-on-one. Leave Embiid out of it. Give me Maxie. And by the way, part of the reason that it hasn't worked very well is that Tyrese Maxie has been pretty damn good, pretty damn tough. Tobias Harris has not been a pushover for Jalen Brunson on switch. I mean, there are better matchups than Kelly Uber and Nick Batum, but that's the simplest offense.

And the Sixers have complicated that offense by just not guarding Josh Hart and saying, you can't go one-on-one. You're going one-on-two. And by the way, the second guy is going to meet you 18 feet from the rim, 15 feet from the rim, not 12 feet from the rim where you want to get. And so the Knicks pivoted, and I thought this was very smart. They went all out assault on Embiid in the pick and roll, particularly in game four, because they know he wants to drop back on defense and they know if we script it right,

Sometimes that was, hey, we're going to set our picks at half court. We're going to nail you at half court. If we give you good screens, if we send you off one screen before you run into a handoff with Hartenstein so you got a little daylight, you're going to be able to walk into some jump shots and then Embiid's going to come up higher.

and he's going to have to work harder. And by the way, when he comes up higher, a couple times Jalen Brunson got around him. And even when he drops back and he's in a pretty good position, Jalen Brunson is incredible at using in and out dribbles and hesitation dribbles to get you retreating, backpedaling, off balance, and just snap like he's on a pogo stick. Snap straight up before you can even figure out what's going on. Floater.

I wonder, we've seen the Sixers go zone. We've seen the Sixers go semi-zone where the zone is really just like keep Embiid out of the pick and roll and everybody who comes up, it's like a parade of Knicks trying to get Embiid in the pick and roll and he tags out every time.

I wonder if we'll see a little bit more of that or other or just, you know, like, are they going to trap Jalen Brunson and make the other guys beat him? Are they going to mix in all of those things? They didn't really do a lot of that in game four. But you can't just let Brunson walk in to 18 foot jump shots. And I think they were smart to go at him like that to just get him tired.

Totally. The really high pick and rolls honestly didn't surprise me, the matting that in. I think it's been a slow evolution to that throughout the series. So game two, even though Brownson shot terribly in that game, 8 of 29, and that was the crazy one that ends on the referee fiasco with the six points in however many seconds it was.

The end of that game, their fourth quarter offense, I would say it devolved. It didn't look very good. Basically, what they were doing is they were running empty corner side pick and rolls and trying to get switches for Brunson. But on one play, Brunson runs that exact empty corner side pick and roll, and he gets by Embiid. This is earlier in the game. He gets by Embiid and finishes a lefty layup.

It was just about the only time to that point that Brunson had burst by somebody and gotten to the rim. Earlier this year, Jalen Brunson comes into the season much more confident as a pull-up shooter. He isn't just hitting his pull-up threes, but he's hitting them from way deeper. And that was something that was a very, very conscious development on his part. When he first came to the Knicks, the Knicks have this four-point line at their practice court. And Brunson saw the four-point arc right after he signed there and was like, I'm

I got to work this into my routine. So he starts working that into his workout routine regularly to be able to be able to pull up from 28, from 30, and basically be able to hit those long threes. Beginning of the year, he's hitting tons of long threes. And the Knicks are running these really high pick and rolls. I know at the beginning of the year, Brunson's even kind of having to remind his screeners, like, no, guys, don't set these around the three-pointer. Like, come up five feet, seven feet above.

We're going to pull them out. We're going to create even more space on these sorts of plays. I can hit these now. And he's hitting these deep threes. The Knicks kind of got away from that throughout the regular season. And I've talked with Jalen about it. It wasn't a conscious decision. It wasn't like we're not going to run these really high pick and rolls anymore. It was really because Brunson was getting...

got to a point where he was so dangerous that he was just kind of getting blitzed on pick and rolls off the bat right away. And he felt it was better to run the pick and rolls a little shallower, be able to dump off the Hartenstein and then Hartenstein could create basically in the short roll from the nail where he feels a little bit more dangerous. And it worked really well. The Brunson Hartenstein pick and roll is arguably the most successful action the Knicks have. But I wondered because the Sixers haven't been guarding Brunson that way. And Embiid is not really capable of

And even if Embiid is all the way healthy, Embiid's just not at his best if you're just going to blitz him. He'll flash a blitz every now and then, but just every now and then. It's not an every-down defense for him. Totally. And so I wondered, with the way Embiid is moving, especially late in games, he gets tired, the knee acts up or whatever.

I was wondering like, just make the dude cover more ground. And I was not surprised. They've started to do that a little bit more. I'm not surprised. They've started to attack him a little bit more. I think that also allows Brunson to be able to get downhill. He's he's driving 29 times a game in this series. Luka Donchik is a, our buddy, John Macri tweeted this out today. I saw he's driving 29 times a day, a game according to second spectrum in the playoffs. And he's,

Only one other player in the league is within 10 drives a game of him. Luca's driving 23. Nobody else is even within 10 drives a game. The Sixers as a team are driving 32 times a game. He's driving 29. He is just every time he is coming around that pick and roll, he is making the effort to get downhill. And when his floater is on,

When that little, those little post-up moves that are, that just, just, just make everybody fall out of their shoes when they're working. Like it's just really hard to defend in those situations. The other thing that the Knicks have done only in glimpses that I would, I would like to see them do more in searching for offense. That isn't what we're talking about. Just Jalen Brunson creating it.

is they ran a couple of pin downs for DiVincenzo with Embiid's guy as the screener, knowing Embiid is not going to fly out. And if this screen hits, we can get an open shot. DiVincenzo missed those shots. Jalen Brunson got a three out of a similar action, more of a flare screen than a pin down on Batum by, I think, Hartenstein, knowing again, like Joel's not going to pop out

I like the idea of introducing a little bit of that variety to it. And again, it's a way to sort of leverage the fact that Embiid is like a lot of centers is just going to hang in the paint. But man, this has been this is a war of attrition. And so what's Robinson and bogey like? What's the latest that you know?

On these guys, because the Knicks, like at some point, you're going to need a critical mass of guys to win multiple playoff rounds, which is what the Knicks goal is. No question. Robinson's dealing with the ankle sprain. I know he went out and gave it a go before the game yesterday, and he just wasn't feeling it. He left the game in a walking boot once again.

I know he really wants to play. He's, he's very frustrated. He just came back from surgery on that same ankle about a month ago. And he was just starting to look like the early season version of himself. I thought he'd had a really good series defensively against him, bead killing guys on the glass, like,

Ultimately, Zach, you want to talk about adjustments for Philadelphia? Find a way to get a damn rebound. It's one thing when Mitchell Robinson and Isaiah Hartenstein and Josh Hart are the main guys who are just clobbering you on the offensive boards.

but you can't let precious to come precious. You had a great game for defensively and on the boards and he was active and he is a good rebounder, but you can't be giving up all of those late game offensive boards. The Knicks are rebounding something like 40%, 40%. Well, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and

I, I felt like he had more than that. Maybe he had a couple of tips that were not credited to him, but a lot of times Lowry is guarding him and he's just too big. And he's just kind of like plowing through Kyle Lowry. And a couple of them were late big time offensive rebounds. Yeah. Mitch has been great. And bogey he's already dealing with the wrist thing. Apparently there's been reports about that. And then he gets his ankle, uh, Batum rolled up on his ankle, not a dirty play, just like it happens. It seems to happen once a game in these series. Um,

And I think, you know, bogey's not playing as much as I anticipated he would play, but he's made some shots in the series and he's, he's, you feel the threat. I mean, you feel it on both ends, like Philly's going at him on defense, but you feel how much more open the floor is for the Knicks when he's out there, particularly when it's him and Ananobi and heart gets a breather. You feel like, Oh my God, there's like so much space to work with. He's doing essentially what he's there to do. Yeah, no question. And, and,

I hate it when people say this, but I'm going to say it anyway. It's been one of those series for him where you look at the percentages and you're like, okay. But just about every one of his threes feels like it's worth twice as much. Game two, for example. Game two, you could say game two was one with the officials. Sure, for the Knicks. That's a very obvious point. I think a more subtle trend from game two of this series was the start of the fourth quarter.

Embiid is on the floor for four minutes and 17 seconds. Maxie is on the floor for some of that time. Jalen Brunson is off for that entire time. The Sixers have to crush in those minutes. I have in my notes the Knicks manufactured some buckets. I'm trying to remember off the top of my head what they were. I think Duce hits a three, right? Oh, this is a different game.

Yeah, Bogdanovich hit two, and McBride had the play where he tore the rebound away from Maxey. Unbelievable play. And went back up. I mean, it was—I think it was Knicks fans finally getting some sort of revenge after Zion did that to Kevin Knox. I knew you were going to make the deepest—I remember that. That was in Summer League, right? Yes, it was. That did Zion just like, oh, okay, Kevin Knox is 1A part. I knew you were going to go there. Yeah, well—

I'll tell you what, not a deep cut for Knicks fans. They remember that one. In terms of supplementary offense...

It could not be overstated how big Isaiah Hartenstein's floater has been for their offense. And I know Isaiah Hartenstein is minus 45 for the series. That's the worst figure on the Knicks. That's because he's matched up with Embiid. That's all that is. His floater, not only is he making it, but he's creating shots for other people because the threat of that floater. Like when you overload on Brunson and you leave that pocket pass,

sometimes there's another defender getting ready to pounce on Hartenstein because they know he's going to make that shot. Deuce McBride got a three out of that from Brunson on a kickout in, in game four. Um,

Just a war of a series and waiting on the other end of it, Fred, I don't know how much of it you've gotten to see, but it's the Knicks potential next opponent is the winner of Indiana-Milwaukee, which has turned into not a dud because game three was super exciting. And even game four without Dame and Giannis was exciting because the paces are always exciting to watch. Miles Turner is having the series of his life, 24 points, eight boards, 50% shooting on threes. And Tyrese Halliburton,

You know, has not been the same guy since his hamstring injury. It's been interesting to watch in this series that after game two, the Bucs switched the matchups on defense so that Brooke Lopez was on Myles Turner. He had been guarding Pascal Siakam. And I think the reason for that was

The Miles Turner pick and roll is Halapurton's pet play. That's what he wants to do. That's his comfort zone more so than with Pascal, although I think they could lean into that more, particularly if Bobby Portis is going to be on Siakam. They've been really diligent about going at Bobby Portis' drop defense, and they should. But we're going to put our better defender on Miles Turner.

We're going to drop back and we're going to turn you into a dribbler, Tyrese. We're not going to give you the easy passes. We're not going to blitz you and let you pick us apart. We're going to turn you into a dribbler, try to stay attached to you, try to make you shoot twos, try to make Miles Turner shoot pick and pop jumpers that we're going to contest. And slowly but surely, Tyrese has kind of problem solved that in a lot of different ways.

But it's just I just don't even know what to take from the series. It's just it's just such a bummer that the Bucks are decimated like this. And, you know, we could be looking at Knicks Pacers in the next round, which I picked the Knicks in seven in this series. I picked the Pacers in six, but mostly just because of Giannis. And but I don't think that that was on a lot of people's bingo cards as an Eastern Conference semifinals like two months ago, even.

Yeah. That, that, that, that box game the other night kind of reminded me a little bit of like a throwback four years ago, bucks where they were of the mentality of, you know what, we're taking away the corners. We're taking away the rim hoist up. You're above the break threes. We're betting that your guys are not going to hit enough of them to make them justifiable. And that's basically the approach they took to miles Turner miles Turner just hit seven of them like that. Sometimes that is just what happens. A guy's going to hit his threes. Uh,

I would be very interested to see a Knicks, but I don't know if you want to get into Knicks Pacers and put the, not yet, not yet, not yet, not yet. You got him bead down three, one. He's not out of it. You got potentially Damian Giannis. And I don't know what their status is going to be, but like, I'm not closing out the bucks. Ain't going to be easy without home court advantage for Indiana. It's not going to be easy. Totally. I, I was, I was really intrigued by that defensive mishap and, and, and,

with Halliburton, he is...

so good at kind of being able to create these transition-esque opportunities in the half court. Like the ultimate example of that, I loved the ATO that they ran in game three where Halliburton hit the game winner and won because they set it up as if they gave him like almost a transition-like runway against Pat Bev, which gave him momentum going to the hoop and he hits the floater. And when you give him a runway in the half court,

he can be really good finding a rhythm, really good getting to the hoop, really good pulling up. Uh, you know, if he starts to look like he did before the injury, all of a sudden you're talking about one of the best pull up jump shooters in the league. So I, I, I was, I was intrigued by that adjustment. The Pacers offense looked really good. It's been a lot of strange injury riddled series, honestly, in the first round, um, including the Knicks series with MB dealing with an injury and the Knicks dealing with a bunch of injuries. Um,

hopefully everybody can get healthy but yeah knicks uh game five is when tomorrow tuesday game five is tuesday game five tuesday the garden is gonna be this is like not that i'm old enough to remember fred cats i'm old enough 1994 like the whole new york city metropolitan area was on fire with the knicks and the rangers having long playoff runs at the same time the rangers are good right are they up in their series

The Rangers are up in their series. The Rangers, I think, I don't know the first thing about hockey, but the Rangers have the best record in the East. They just won their series. I mean, I remember 1994 is obviously also the OJ year in the finals against the Rockets. But I remember like passing time between classes in high school. I went to a big high school, like 2000 people.

People were just chanting, let's go Knicks and let's go Rangers as people were parading from one side of the school to the other. I was not a fan of either team, but as a sports fan, I was like, this is like Nirvana for New York City area sports fans. And they love this team. They've really taken to this team. The Villanova guys are beloved and...

you know, obviously going forward. I mean, like, I don't even want to go forward. Like this team is really, really good. And I've said all year we could wake up in may and the Knicks could be in the conference finals. And that, that reality is not that far away anymore. And yet they're still as well positioned as any team in the NBA to if, and when they want to like go all in for another guy, they've got everything they need. They've done it just an absolutely tremendous job top to bottom from Leon Rose down to the 15th guy on the roster and,

You just never would have imagined that the Knicks would become like a model team-building franchise, but here they are. Yep, and I do think that's something they're going to target this summer specifically. I know we hear it every year, but just with the way— But who? It's the NBA, Zach. Too early, too early to say. There's always someone. They didn't put this plan together. They have all of their own draft picks moving forward. They have four protected ones from other teams. They're going to get Dallas's this year. It's going to convey—

They didn't put this plan together to target Donovan Mitchell and only Donovan Mitchell. Now, maybe they did it to target a CAA client and only a CAA client, but they did it to bring in a faceless, really good, not really good, great top of the line star who can come help.

The timeline sped up when it turned out that Jalen Brunson is actually that. And now they need to go get a second one who fits that description, which is a lot easier to do than finding the first. The reason I say I think this summer is really the time to do it is because in 2025, Brunson can become a free agent. Julius Randall can become a free agent. If Brunson doesn't get any better, he's getting a max.

If Julius Randle just comes back next season and has the same season, he's going to get a raise. You got to pay OG and an OB this summer. And that game four for him was the ultimate, like, you're going to max me, aren't you? Kind of thing. And I don't think they're going to max him, but I think he's going to make more money than people are guessing.

I think he is really going to get paid. Right now, you have Brunson on arguably the most team-friendly non-rookie contract in the NBA. He's making essentially a little bit more than half of a max contract. There aren't that many non-rookies who you could say that about. So this is kind of your opportunity to go out and from a financial standpoint, try to

try to make something happen with the draft picks you have. You can use that Dallas pick. You can use the pick you have this year, and then you can use future picks moving forward if you want to do it during free agency. So I'm looking at the draft as a time for them to potentially target a big move, or if nothing pops up there, then free agency. And as for who, people ask who all the time. I don't know. It's the NBA. Like a year, two years ago, no one would have said Kevin Durant. You know, it's just...

Stuff happens, stuff pops up, and there's always somebody. When was there an offseason where there wasn't drama with some awesome player? There will be people. I don't want to name names anymore right now, but I'll just say this. I understand that perfect is the enemy of good, and you can't just wait around for like, okay, we want a wing between 6'6 and 6'9 who can shoot threes forever

create off the dribble and switch onto every position defensively and is an all NBA level player. Like, okay, like you can wait around forever for that. I would just, I think this team is good enough that I would try. I mean, like sustainability is critical for me. Like I just old and injury prone or both.

are just, like, I don't really feel that... I think this team is good enough to, like, I don't have to, like, get a little too over-exuberant in terms of the risk on that transaction. Like, I can be a little bit picky, but again, if you're too picky, you just never get anybody because that magical guy... Okay, I don't want to guard because I have Jalen Brunson. I can't have another small guard and I don't want to... I get that it's hard. I just...

I, it's a, it's a, it's a, they've, they, they, they've been so good as to make it a more difficult question and just whoever becomes available, we got to do it or we got to do it. We're just trapped in mediocrity. It's not the case anymore. I think they're also, what's going to be really interesting moving forward. And I don't think we can know the answer to this yet is, um,

Does the fact that they are legitimately a very good team right now, does that speed up their process or does it slow it down? Do they feel like, you know what? We're really good. Nobody knows when a window is going to fall off. Nobody knows when a window is going to close in the NBA. This stuff can disintegrate so much faster than you ever anticipate. When you're right there, you got to make the move now. Or do they say,

Man, this team just got the two seed with 50 wins with Julius Randle playing half the season with OG Ananobi missing significant time with Mitchell Robinson missing significant time when Randle and Ananobi were both on the team. They were 12 and two in the games. Those two played in January. They looked like a legitimate matchup.

team that could blow the doors off of any other team in the league. And if you just bring back Julius Randall, you have a very similar roster makeup. You fix some stuff on the margins. Maybe this team can be really good as is, and it's not worth giving up everything for someone who's not a perfect fit. That being said, I think they want a legitimate number two for Brunson. And one of the things that we've seen in this series, by the way, is if you can make life really difficult for Brunson,

the Knicks offense can bog down. Like one of the things that has been so interesting to follow is Brunson's just making insanely difficult shots, but almost all of them are self-created.

He's not getting spot ups like he was at the beginning of the year because Julius Randall is their best option to create spot up threes. He can get him going downhill. He gets him in the post. He gets a mismatch. A double team comes. He's really good at kicking it out. They ran him in more pick and rolls this year as the ball handler than in prior seasons for that exact reason. 100%. And he's really good at cross court passes now and especially in January.

when the ball movement and the player movement was so good, I thought Randall was so incredibly bought in to the way they were playing. And you talk to people behind the scenes and they're like, Julius is just so bought in on this style right now. He just wants to play the right way. And I thought he was really in the midst of,

arguably his best ever passing season at the time that he got hurt in terms of just the diversity of passes that he was capable of making to cutters and to shooters and everything along those lines. And if you can go get someone who can create for Brunson and up those catch and shoot opportunities, which have kind of dissipated since the Julius Randall injury, and they're going to hurt the more you play really good defenses in the playoffs moving forward. If you can get someone who can do that even better than Julius Randall,

I think they're going to do that. I don't necessarily considering how patient they've been this whole time. Like look how patient they were with Donovan Mitchell and they were in a far more desperate situation two years ago during the Donovan Mitchell thing than they are now when they know how good Brunson is and not just think that Brunson could maybe one day be an all-star at some point in a friendly year for it. Now he's the fourth leading scorer in the league.

I think they're going to be patient and reasonable just because that's what the track record of this front office says they'll be. Well, as I said to Bobby Marks earlier, always got to remind yourself, the playoffs are everything. The playoffs reveal everything. The playoffs determine what your next steps are as a franchise. And there's a downside here that we haven't talked about where maybe they lose the next three games. Maybe they lose in the next round because they can't score enough points. And that ups your sort of

Desperation is the wrong word, but ups your... Changes your conception of what this team is and can be. And you're like, you know what? Maybe we do put all our chips in for this guy who's 31 and injury prone because he's just that goddamn good and we're willing to absorb the risk because...

We want to up our short-term chances at a championship at the expense of our medium to long-term chances at one, and that's okay. Fred Katz, we've got a long way to go before we get there. Game five is tomorrow. Knicks, Sixers, thank you for your time. Your analysis at The Athletic is second to none. The Katz & Shoot podcast is a must-listen to for anybody who wants to get the details of what's going on with the Knicks and other teams around the league. Fred Katz, everybody, thank you, sir. Thank you so much for having me, Zach. It's always great to come on.

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